I’ve been watching that interview between Jordan Peterson and Charlie Kirk, and their discussion about the concept of the sin against the Holy Spirit, which Jesus mentioned as the only one that’s unforgivable, struck me as very interesting.

Charlie said it’s about using the garb of religion as a bludgeon against people, and in service of your ego, basically, and Jordan said it might be about rejecting the call of God to fulfil your destiny, or the failure to “aim up”, towards God. I thought they both have a valid point there, but something else came to my mind as I was taking a shower now.

I think the Evangelical, “sola scriptura” attitude, is the sin against the Holy Spirit. It’s the attitude that Holy Spirit was present when the Bible was written, and then took a permanent vacation. It’s the attitude that you can ignore people like St. Augustine or St. Theresa of Avilla because they are not in the Bible, and only the Bible matters because it’s the word of God, and God somehow went mute after it was completed. It’s the attitude that you own God, that everything outside of your own religion is of lesser quality, that it’s something that can be summarily dismissed, that it can’t have been inspired by God, and even if it were, it can be only to a far lesser degree than what you have in your own religion. To sin against Holy Spirit is to reject it in all things that don’t fit the mental framework of your religious beliefs.

It’s also about rejecting the living presence of God when it confronts you, and you think you are safe in your scripture and your religious rites and customs. It’s thinking you are always the one whose position is to teach, because that’s what your religion assumes, even when you’re confronted with “the living Force” that is trying to tell you something. It’s the sin of the Pharisees, who would lecture Jesus and try to trick him, assuming they own God and he’s some upstart.

Yes, it’s definitely about rejecting the path that leads up, and not walking through the door God opened before you, and it’s definitely about using the idea of God as a tool of your ego, in service of your self-aggrandisement. It’s also having the keys to the heavenly kingdom, but neither using them to enter yourself, nor allowing the others to enter, choosing to make the door an obstacle instead of a place of passage. It may also be using gifts of the Holy Spirit in order to confuse others and lead them away from God. There are indeed too many candidates, and I think all those interpretations are valid in their own way. Rejection of transcendence in service of your own lower nature, and using the form people associate with transcendence in order to deceive them away from transcendence and to give yourself power over others, though, seem like the best interpretation.